Big Spring Beach Clean: Seaton Sluice 2nd Aprily 2017

The Fifth Point team hit the beach as part of the Surfers Against Sewage annual Spring Clean

Spring has definitely sprung as our volunteers were greeted with beautiful sunshine on our latest beach clean. We were joined by our band of dedicated regulars and some new faces. It was brilliant to meet students from a local school who are working towards their John Muir Award and chose to pop along to help out.

Where Did All The Litter Go?

Nic saw a massive difference in the beach since she last visited. About a month ago, she decided to add it to the clean-up list because the area looked quite badly neglected. During the beach clean, we were pleasantly surprised to find very little litter. Hopefully this was from the council or conscientious beach goers performing their own spring clean. Unfortunately, we think the beach might have been washed clean by recent storms. The shoreline itself was a whole different shape, carved by the waves which would mean that any litter sitting on the sand would be dragged out to sea.

SO.MUCH.DOG.POO.

Our hard-working volunteers picked up a modest 36kg of rubbish. However, an unbelievable 12.5kg of that total was DOG POO. Bagged and unbagged, our guys showed dedication to the cause by removing as much as they could stomach. A kind passer-by even gave us a stash of poo bags to use because we’d run out. Hats off to our volunteers for tackling this dirty job.

We collected 3.5kg of cans plus 4kg of glass that went straight to the recycling bins. We also added 3.5kg of rigid plastic to the collection for our friends at TerraCycle and their Beach Plastic Recycling scheme.

Stowaways...

James and Nic filled the back of the van with trash and headed back to base to complete the final sorting. This is where they found stowaways hiding in the rubbish! They picked out every dune snail they could find and tried to keep them in the jar while they finished up. A quick car ride later and they were safely back in the dunes where they belong!